


Yesteryear's Shorn Shroud

by bloominghawthorns



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Not Human, Courtship, F/M, Swords & Sorcery, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-07
Updated: 2019-03-07
Packaged: 2019-11-13 07:07:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18027074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloominghawthorns/pseuds/bloominghawthorns
Summary: Peace and prosperity reigns in a world where successful occupation of the lands has been a human triumph. In their past victory, the race of the fey had nearly been decimated. In their culling, humanity had unwittingly allowed hoards of darker creatures to burgeon unchecked, fell creatures birthed from mysterious mists, either from the very deposits that spew it or by having been malformed from prolonged contact with it. While enchanted weapons and relics are a success, fey are the only sentient beings that can withstand aptly against these creatures with their natural born magic.Measures were taken to collect and raise malleable fey to assist in the war efforts. History and culture, all having been wiped by their ancestors' invasion, are scant and the victors' descendants are forced to rely on ancestral bestiaries, ancient witness accounts, what nuggets of lore that remain with the fey, and hearsay to breed and raise them. Results, in the beginning, vary.Over 3000 years have passed since the hoards were eliminated or banished into the unknown. However, the deposits of mist, the majority contained behind wards, have never once slumbered.





	Yesteryear's Shorn Shroud

**Author's Note:**

> Hi!
> 
> And no, no, I am not discontinuing my pleasure project, There's Life, And Then There's Living. I just had this little piece of writing in my documents for months now. I plugged away at it one night months ago and then shelved it to continue after There's Life, And Then There's Living was completed (not to be completed for some time!). 
> 
> This chapter is ultimately a placeholder of sorts. Think of it as a prologue.
> 
> I'm unsure of the rating. M or E. I recall I complained I didn't like writing erotica because if it got too long, I'd get bored and it wasn't a talent I had, but there are scenes I have in mind for this one are necessary but are rather explicit, so it'll probably be E to be on the safe side. :/ I'm sorry. I will do my best, and attempt to keep all of the story as engaging as possible. 
> 
> It's fantasy/romance/action. 
> 
> Features: Kara, Brothers Connor (Twins!), and they aren't androids. Also will feature worldbuilding and might and magic and not really an alpha/omega aspect. I didn't want to tag it, because that's not what it was. They're not human though. They are just different mating practices (genetically in them), pheromones at work and their responding reactions and such. I mean, I guess in that way it is? But I didn't want to make anyone think that's what they're going to get when it got to those parts.
> 
> Thanks for reading this big long note!

Inside a looming fortification to the north of a city, itself cloistered and guarded by high perimeter walls, a guard made his rounds. It was quiet, save for the low crackles of warm torchlight along the upper level walls and the electric spritz noise of the heatless, white orbs in sconces of the lower levels. The chimes of the curfew bell had rang a few hours ago and all its residents were abed, as they should be. He took a peek through every locked door’s viewing slit, of which there were fifteen doors on either side, and nodded to every floor’s posted guard and continued on his way. This would be his fifth round, which he took his time on as it was close to shift’s end, especially as he descended further down to the level that housed the more troublesome residents. 

In his opinion, which was shared by all that were employed by the Aegis, the residents should be grateful. They lived in a lap of luxury. Some grew to take it all for granted while flourishing in one of the Aegis’s fortifications when they could be out in the wide world and be dangerously overcome by the beast within them. Instead, they were safe, warm, fed, educated, and as far removed as they possibly could be from the mists that spilled from the petrified lands to the north or natural, unwarded deposits that drove their kind mad and feral as any other fell abomination. In the fortification, the only time the residents caught sick was from an ill wind that breezed into the ground floor from the city and they only required a visit to one of four wards of healing within to rid themselves of a bad case of sniffles. 

The guard could remember he and his family going hungry as a child, and working hard in adolescence to be employed by the Aegis; could remember cold washes from a pail of river water once a day, and once a week in the bathhouses; could recall his family’s constant illnesses and how expensive the tinctures and healer’s visits had costed. The salve for his father’s rough, raw hands from working various jobs had been been a pretty pound too, taking two weeks’ worth of paid coin for an ounce. When the guard was finally gainfully chosen for employment by the Aegis, he had had no one to share the joy with at the time, as his parents and little sisters were dead from a deadly case of city-wide flu. The only reason he hadn’t caught it was due to being occupied in training, away at the capital. Once he reached the lowest dorms on the fifteenth subterranean level, he was in a dark mood for the memories. Today had been the twentieth anniversary of his family’s deaths, but usually he was able to beat the now deadened and dulled grief back.

His gut soured too, upon observing the guard in a slumped position against the wall.

“By above.” The guard heaved a great sigh. He made his way over, taking off an orb from a sconce, a series of runes lighting up along it before the orb lifted. He then waved its bright light before the sleeping man’s face. Upon no reaction and the orb’s electric spritz noise increasing, the guard knew he had been bespelled. He raised a hand, intent on preparing a backhand. Predictably, the guard woke before he could swing. The culprit’s magic was a lesser summoning, behaving like moth-eaten cheesecloth in comparison to her peers’ stronger evocations. Even the children were far more powerful than she. “A blunder it remains not to make her wear a layered choker with the others, wouldn’t you say, Sir Vop?”

“No,” moaned Vop and hung his head. “Not again. Hiss a lie to me, Sir Fomm.”

Fomm shook his head and clapped a shoulder. “The chit has run off.”

“Again,” Vop said and tiredly and shakily stood.

Fomm and Vop both poked their heads into the formerly heavily locked and warded bedroom. The ward itself required the door’s locks to be secured before activation. It was a trite measure, in Fomm’s mind, especially for this one. None could still wrap their minds around how she kept escaping. Sending her to her room without metal or thin implements for improvised pick-locking hadn’t lessened the count.

“Curse that chit,” Vop muttered when they saw messed up sheets. “She’s not been starved or beaten. Educated and raised like crystal, as all the others here. What’s got her tongue, ya think?” 

“Best not to think on a mind that yearns for the mists still,” Fomm replied. 

“I shudder at the idea, Sir Fomm. To think, even after all this time since an ironmaster discovered her in a town close to a mountain with a lesser one,” Vop said.

“Mm. Several, yes,” Fomm answered. The moonless night she arrived, she had been a tiny, terrified thing with big blue eyes that were still glowing from the effects of being raised close to the said deposits. Her mist-soaked blood had taken a half a year of civilized culture to not turn blue when introduced to air, and she had cried for her father and grandmother nightly for over a year. He had pitied her for a long time, until she joined the ranks of those troubled fey and started running off at age thirteen, causing them all no end of headaches.

They trudged further inside, opening the door wider. Fomm gave Vop the orb to hold. The room contained a bed, a water-closet, a carpet, and a desk and armoire, along with a low bedside shelf that held a few books from one of the fortification’s libraries. Three stone vases, each set on the desk, bookshelf, and water-closet sink, had clusters of flower clippings from one of the gardens. They, the carpet, and the spines of the books were the only notes of true colour in the stone-walled room, discounting the wood. 

The written disciplinary notes and amount of docked pay flashed before Fomm’s eye, as surely as they were in Vop’s. Fomm felt the bundle of blankets and mattress for warmth and found it still clung. Her body had laid here recently, mere minutes ago. “She’d put you to slumber not long,” Fomm said.

“I heard nothing,” Vop replied. “Not a whisper.”

“She would master that spell,” Fomm muttered. It was a favourite of hers when she wanted to be alone, without a guard, in one of the gardens, so of course she would. 

The door suddenly slammed closed. They both remained where they were, Fomm with his torso bent over her bed and Vop stood beside him with the shining light in hand. Heat captured their faces and they both looked at another and then the door. Neither bothered trying the handle. 

“Forgot about checking behind it,” Vop said then in a groan. “A basic mistake.”

“Which of us?” Fomm asked, motioning at the glowing orb.

“I will.” Vop braced himself and then pressed and held the orb to the door’s middlemost spot. The light of it dimmed before flaring and the ward’s matrix shone and scrawled its now visible runes about the entirety of the wood and stone frame. He continued to keep the orb in place, tense and teeth gritted, before the runes splintered themselves around the matrix, which itself was in the shape of a multi-layered circle. The orb’s light winked out, followed by the door’s lock disengaging.

They rushed out and Fomm steadied Vop, as the other man almost slumped headfirst towards the wall. As he waited for his fellow guard to regain himself, Fomm looked about the hall on either side. There were stairs that led to the night gardens below, a level that nursed plants that only grew in the dark, but there was no exit and further up would be guards. However, now that the fey was out, she could evoke as she pleased, until she ran out of mana that was. She would need rest and eat to regain her strength, and that was when the tasked ironmaster would strike.

“Let us alert the night captain... and not speak of our confinement, brief though it was,” Fomm suggested once the other straightened.

“Humiliating,” Vop said, shaking his hand that had held the orb, with a face pinched. The drawback to using it to disable the low level wards like those on the door caused exhaustion, as well as temporary pins and needle numbness in the hand of the human holder. Fomm replaced the orb to recharge on its sconce. 

“How far do you believe she’ll get this time?” Vop asked on their way up the hall.

“She gets further every time,” he replied. “Possibly to Miller’s Reach.” It was a small trading post two towns away from the city.

“Should we write a request to the capital?”

“No,” Fomm said immediately.

“This is too many times for this year and she’s almost nine and ten,” argued Vop. “Soon enough, she’ll be a score and in her first spring.”

“No,” Fomm repeated with more warning. “The captain will disperse a heaven’s message and any ironmaster in the area and surroundings will receive it, and that will be that."

Vop paused and considered Fomm seriously. “We could make this issue disappear. Should we order some red ice to sprinkle in her nightly meal?”

Fomm withheld a shudder. “No. And do not air it to the others,” he ordered.

The other man nodded quickly. “Yes, Sir Fomm.”

Fomm kept to himself on the way up, using an orb to verify bespelled slumber in each floor guard for his report, and Vop thankfully didn’t speak much at all. While Fomm had a bias towards the fey he guarded, he was considerably more disdainful of that substance’s use and had used his seniority more than once as a blockade in reference to the implementation. It needed majority in the guards for a written request to be brought forth to a captain’s eyes and he wouldn’t have it within this fortification while he breathed.

The effects of red ice drained fey after providing a surge of mana, and he observed that aplenty at the capital. It was a surge they were too young or deliberately untrained to deal with and for the most part panicked about and self-harmed. The drain would last for a few weeks and caused something of an addiction that needed to be managed in the fey, but it kept the more troublesome runaways bound to their fortifications that used it. Weaned off it, the fey were ultimately compliant thereafter. The other assured side effects were uncontrollable shakes and night terrors and/or day terrors, all which at times lasted for a year or more, depending on the quantity of red ice usage forced upon them. 

With how weak powered she was normally, Fomm had no doubt the surge would burn the blood in her veins.

-

_A fey is gone._

In the later hours of the morning, a wagon made its way towards a town from the west, still forty minutes away by the wagon’s inhabitants' estimation. On either side of the dirt path were trees, most with raised roots that were wide enough for two men abreast to stand on. A sign had been passed an hour ago that indicated the next spot of civilization was called Yarning. It was here a short figure hopped off from the back, a young woman. What sunlight from above made its way down to the road was broken and shadowed by the boughs above. The day was warm, but cool under the sheltering canopy.

_Female._

“Thanks again,” she said, brushing off the bit of hay from her dress and braided light brown hair. Another young woman leaned out, a swaddled bundle in her arms, which began to fuss. She called for the driver, her husband, to stop.

_Long brown hair._

“Are you certain?” she asked over the baby, after. “I still say to keep going with us.” She watched the young woman with fear. “And I’ll pay you more coin to keep soothing her. You’ve a magic touch, like a fey, but not,” she hastened to tack on.

_Blue eyes._

The young woman smiled. “I know my way well enough,” she fibbed. “And the sun’s still out. Ironmasters have cleared these areas free of the feral and the maddened horde. With how close we are to the region’s fort, there’s no vagabonds either, and it’s summer. I’ll be safe.”

The mother didn’t look convinced. 

_Petite._

“I know you don’t believe me, but there’s a little unnamed hamlet if I head straight though the forest,” the young woman said, pointing to the south. “I’ll be fine.”

“Well... I can’t persuade you, I see,” the mother said, before she dug into the pocket of her dress. “At least take some more coin.”

“I could sell one of these bracelets in town for it,” Kara lied to her, indicating one of the four delicate silver chains adorning one wrist. A soft, musical chime of each chain's tiny bells sounded from the slight movement. She couldn’t take them off, they were spelled to remain on her until a guard released the binding. 

The mother shook her head. “I wouldn’t sell mine, had I any. You’ve blessed me with more hours of sleep than I’ve received in weeks. Here, take them.” She reached out with a handful of small round silver and bronze coins, the size of half an inch each.

_Ten and eight._

“I’m the one that’s thankful here, Juna,” said the young woman, taking the proffered coins and putting them in her own dress pocket. “I wouldn’t have been able to make it to my cousin’s in time without your aid.” 

_Return her to Aegis East._

“Just be careful, Kara. Wouldn’t want a city lady like you to meet a fey in the wild,” the mother said. She gasped. “Can you imagine?”

_Kara Aex._

“That’d be scary,” commented Kara. “Safe travels. Hope your father-in-law recovers swiftly!” She waved at them, before she walked southward. The wagon continued on its way, the baby audibly fussing loudly. Once the distance was greater than she could squint to see the human mother and baby, Kara pivoted and went in the opposite direction. As she made her way through the woodland, having to climb over a hump of root on occasion, she still couldn’t believe her luck. The wagon had passed six towns, the husband urging the horses and wagon at a steady clip, all in his efforts to reach his ailing father with his small family. She was further than she had ever been. 

Kara inhaled mightily the air of the forest and stretched her back, her arms straining up before she dropped them, smiling wide. Freedom tasted sweet. She had been a little frightened when she first started hearing faint whispering. It was fortunate only fey and ironmasters could hear the message, otherwise her introduced name would have caused the young family to throw her out of the wagon the moment the whispered message began to drift through the wind currents.

It was still ongoing and that only meant good tidings, in that an ironmaster wasn’t inside the zone of the message to hear it and wasn’t able to hunt her down. When it hastened and then stopped, that’s when she would worry. If it hastened, it meant an ironmaster was within earshot of the message to receive it in full and not in parts. When it stopped, an ironmaster had accepted the mission. As the message was delayed and piecemeal, it meant that Kara had more time to experience the joys of the outside world.

_A fey is gone._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! 
> 
> Aex (A-ex) is my unclever play on AX in the AX400.
> 
> Twin Connors' is Arkae (Ar-kay) for RK.
> 
> Also, once again please do not worry, this is not subject to being updated until There's Life, And Then There's Living has been completed. Or, I guess once I've reached the time skip I can plug away at another chapter for this one. I'll have to think about it! :)


End file.
